The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold

by Scott William Carter

  "That's right," I said. "You keep your hand on my arm while I drink."

  She frowned, and I saw the disgust on her face, the repulsion. If I didn't find it so comical, I would have been angry. She was turned off by me? But then, there was no accounting for a person's attraction, and for me to be offended would be pretty superficial. She was a woman, after all. What did her size matter?"

  "Do it for Olivia," I said.

  She hesitated longer than a Victorian woman considering whether to hold hands with her suitor, then offered me a reluctant nod. I cracked open the first beer. I lifted it to my lips, then, when I saw Mary still hadn't touched me, switched the beer to my left and extended my right arm in front of her. She gritted her teeth but eventually pressed her fingers around my arm, as close as if we were really touching. I felt the familiar electric tingle but stronger than usual, sharper. Touching almost any ghost caused a mild buzz, both for them and for us, but this was different. This was powerful enough that it actually hurt.

  I took my first sip, finding the beer just as smooth and tasteless as I remembered. But I was right about how easy it was to drink. A couple gulps and I'd downed my first can. No reason to take this slow. Better to get Mary to that merry place as fast as possible. In fact, I was so quick that I was halfway through my second can before my body finally caught up, my face and neck warming. My head began to swim. My thoughts, unmoored, drifted without the weight of stress and worry to hold them down.

  I looked at Mary and saw a wisp of smile on her face, her eyes closed, her head slightly bowed.

  "You're feeling it?" I asked.

  "Mmm."

  "You don't seem like someone who hates to drink."

  She opened her eyes and looked at me, the movements already subdued, her eyelids drooping. "I never … I never said I hated it. I said I don't like the taste, and I didn't like what it did to me. But I actually liked this first part. This feeling of … floating."

  "Good. We need to float a lot higher."

  She laughed—a giggle, really, loud and unbidden—and covered her mouth as if embarrassed by it. This caused me to laugh, which caused her to laugh even more, then the two of us broke down in fits of laughter. I knew it was mostly the beer, but I still liked to laugh. There hadn't been much laughter the past few days. I conquered my third can. My eyes turned fuzzy. I started in on my fourth. My whole body felt lighter, as if it would float away if not constrained by the seatbelt. Good thing for that seatbelt. I was suddenly quite grateful for that seatbelt, and I said as much.

  "I wouldn't know," she said, "I can't wear one." Her tone had been morose, but when I met her gaze, she snickered. "Sorry, don't mean to be a downer. Who do you think invented the seatbelt, anyway?"

  "Don't know." I took another sip. "Bet he's dead, though. Or she's dead. Probably died in a car accident."

  "Oh, that's so bad," she said. "You have such a—such a … I can't think of the word. I was going to say you have a certain kind of sense of humor, one that's dark, but I can't think of the right word. Not dark. It was a better word than that. Starts with a 'G.'"

  "Grim?"

  "Right! Grim. Grim sense of humor. As in the Grim Reaper. That's kind of you, isn't it? You deal with dead people. But no, not quite the same. You only come for people after they're already dead. Who's that like? I can't think of anyone. Not like Charon, who helped people cross over the River Styx. I guess—I guess you're one of a kind."

  I lifted my beer in a toast. "I'll drink to that. Myron Vale, one of a kind."

  This brought on another wave of the giggles for both of us, but hers stopped much faster than mine. She gazed out the passenger window, turning her head away from me. When she spoke, her voice, slurred as it was, took on a wistful tone—not quite sad, not quite depressed, but those would have been the emotions had the beer not buffered her fall.

  "I wanted to be one of a kind," she said.

  "Aw … I'm sure you are."

  "No. I'm a fake."

  "Don't say that, Mary. I'm sure you're not a fake. In fact, I gotta … um, I gotta tell you, I'm really hoping you're not a fake. That you and all your merry Maryness will be able to, um … I forgot what I was going to say."

  She continued as if I hadn't said anything, still talking to the window, her face close enough to the glass that her breath misted on it. "I wanted to be a real psychic. Like the ones in the stories! I wanted to have that power. But it's all a bag of tricks. It's all just for show. You're right about me. I'm nothing but a con artist."

  I started to take a sip of the beer, then put it in the drink holder. This wasn't going well. The mood was changing. The thing about getting drunk, and I knew this from all my years of experience, especially those first few years after waking up from my coma, was that alcohol could certainly lift you up like a balloon, but if you fell out of the basket there was nowhere to go but down. Instead of being happy or carefree or at least enjoying some mild form of escape, you were just left watching that happy balloon drift away from you, getting smaller and smaller, leaving you plummeting back to all of your problems, but now with an extra weight of shame to take you down all the faster.

  "You're being hard on yourself," I said. Then, because it didn't cost me much to offer some kindness even when I didn't fully think she deserved it, I added, "You tried to give people what they wanted while entertaining them. You gave them a story with a happy ending. Hollywood does it all the time."

  She sniffled. I'd gotten so used to the electric tingle that I wasn't feeling it anymore—until she lifted her hand away, leaving my arm cold and slightly numb. "I wish I could believe that," she said. "I think I probably wasted my life."

  "No."

  "It's true."

  I sighed. This wasn't getting us anywhere, and I didn't think another couple beers would make all that much difference. When I put the Prius in gear, she whirled around and stared at me.

  "Might as well take you home," I explained.

  "Oh no, don't do that."

  "This doesn't seem to be working, so there's no reason to keep going. I'm already feeling a little silly about this."

  "No. No, please. I want to help. Don't give up. Giving up now will make me feel even worse."

  She hovered her hand over my arm again, and the electric surge came back. It may have just been my imagination, but it felt stronger than ever, the hairs on my arm rising, the feeling spreading all the way up to my neck. What could it hurt? If I drank any more, I wouldn't be able to drive, but I could just sleep it off for a few hours.

  I lifted the beer to my lips again, and hesitated, thinking, if my foggy musings could be called thinking, about how strange it was that life had brought me to this point. I was getting drunk with cheap beer at Mt. Tabor Park at night with a ghost as my only company. And it was by design. That was the really nutty part. Looked at in isolation, this moment would appear insane to just about anyone, including me, including the new me, the one who'd gotten at least somewhat used to his otherworldly ability. But the steps that had led me to this point all seemed perfectly logical, at least within the parameters of the crazy world in which I lived.

  So I took a drink. Then I took another. I finished that beer and one more. I was flying high by that point, both of us were, full of snorting laughter and lots of fragmented conversations that seemed important until one of us laughed, and one of us always laughed. My bulging bladder could no longer be denied, so I told her I was going out in search of a bathroom. She said she'd sit tight, which for some reason she found enormously funny, and I did, too, to the point where I was going to wet myself if I didn't get moving. I stumbled around in the snow and the dark for ten minutes and couldn't find a restroom, so I ventured into the trees and found a quiet spot to relieve myself.

  Again, I had an image of myself from that outside, as I did my business and melted some snow. This was what my life had come to, what I'd become. I was just a common drunk taking a piss in a public park. The next step was to wake up inside a moldy cardboard box un
der the Belmont Bridge.

  Standing there, I watched a grizzled-looking man in ice-encrusted furs march past in snowshoes. He had a tomahawk buried in the back of his head and he paid no attention to me. I laughed sharply and he shot me a mean glare, then recognized me and hurried past. So maybe I wasn't a common drunk.

  When I somehow managed to stagger back to the Prius, and even more miraculously managed to open the door and fall into the welcome warmth of the driver's seat, I found Mary asleep. Totally conked out. Her chin rested on her chest and she produced a trumpetlike snoring with each laborious breath. I slammed the door, hoping that would wake her. No luck. I said her name. No dice there either. I yelled. Same effect. Even passing my hand through her shoulder, which gave me quite a jolt, did nothing for her.

  Well, that was it, then. We'd had our fun, did our best to make Mary merry, but nothing came of it. I would have wished sweet dreams for her, but since the dead do not dream, I hoped whatever timeless, shapeless place her mind went to when she was unconscious somehow relieved her of her troubles for a short time. I'd take her back to her place and give up on this stupid idea. I didn't know how I'd get her out of the car once I got there, but maybe she'd wake by then. If not, I'd drive home and she could wake up in my driveway.

  I reached for the gear stick, saw three gear sticks instead of one, spent a minute or two wondering what devious person had put three gear sticks in my Prius, then finally remembered how drunk I was and what a bad idea it would be to drive. I called Jak. Still no answer. After leaving a slur of words on her voice mail, something I hoped indicated I needed a ride, I sat there in the humming vehicle and wondered what to do.

  It began to snow, tiny flakes glittering like confetti in the cones of light under the streetlamps. I could call Alesha, but how would I explain my predicament? No, I didn't want to go there. Sleep it off, then? That was just about as unappealing, but I didn't see that I had a choice. Not wanting to wake up to an empty fuel tank, I turned off the car. That would mean it was going to get very cold in the Prius in short order, especially because I didn't have the lovely Mary Rittles's body heat to aid in the effort, but it was not so cold I was going to freeze to death. A catnap was all I wanted, anyway, just long enough to shake off the worst of the stupor.

  Resting my head against the seat, I closed my eyes and let myself drift away. It was easier than I thought it would be. I had no idea how long I slept, but it was a deep and dreamless sleep, so deep that I woke slowly and with great effort even though someone was speaking—no, not speaking, chanting, and with plenty of volume and gusto:

  Here's a Tale that Hasn't Been Told,

  Of the Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold.

  The Ghost is the Dream who Owns the Night.

  The Girl is the Dreamer who Fears the Fight.

  The Gold is the Thing that Steals the Sight.

  Take Heed! Be Brave, Be True, and Be Bold

  — Or Lose it All in a Bitter Cold.

  It was a man's voice, deep and rough, someone who probably smoke heavily and drank often, the voice of someone worn down by years of hard living. When I finally swam up through the murk to consciousness, and I realized that the voice was not Mary's, I snapped awake, my heart pounding. I expected to see someone else sitting in the passenger seat, though it was still Mary. She was awake, ramrod straight in her seat, her eyes wide and glassy and staring straight ahead.

  "Did you hear—?" I began.

  Then she spoke, and it was that gravelly male voice I'd heard before, repeating the poem in that same chanting lilt. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise, and something cold slide into the pit of my stomach. If I hadn't been looking right at her, and seen her breath fog the cold air inside the Prius—the heat having long since dissipated—I wouldn't have believed it was her. I wouldn't have believed she was capable of producing such a voice.

  When she repeated the poem a third time, it finally occurred to me that I wasn't going to remember this, not in my beer-infused daze. I grabbed my cell and fumbled around with it until I managed to locate the voice recorder—and, fortunately, by then she'd begun to repeat the poem a fourth time. I focused on the buttons with great intensity to make sure I recorded properly.

  The fourth time turned out to be the last, almost as if she—or he—had been waiting for me. She sat there staring straight ahead, breathing slowly and steadily, hands folded neatly in her lap.

  "Mary?" I said.

  She looked straight at me and I knew, even though physically it was the same Mary, that I was looking at someone else. It was the little things, the way she blinked, the way she cocked her head slightly to the side, the slight pinch to her lips.

  "Are you … in there?" I asked.

  "Hello, Myron Vale."

  It was the gravelly-voiced man. I swallowed away the lump in my throat.

  "Who are you?" I asked.

  "I am no one," he said. "I am everyone. I am part of the Unbound."

  "What is the Unbound?"

  The eyes blinked, slowly and steadily. I was about to repeat the question when he—I had to think of her as a him because of the voice—finally spoke.

  "There is no what to the Unbound," he said. "There is no why to the Unbound. The Unbound merely is."

  "Okay, that's not especially helpful. Are you some kind of ghost? Someone possessing Mary's body—er, I mean, her ghost?" I didn't know if what I was asking was even possible. I felt like I was asking someone in a dream if they were dreaming. "Where do you go when you're not speaking through Mary?"

  The eyes blinked again, but there was no answer. I was afraid he was going to leave, and as drunk as I still was, as fuzzy as my thinking remained, I had this sense that I was onto something here, something deeper that concerned the great divide between the living and the dead.

  "I go nowhere," he said.

  "Who are you?"

  "I am part of the Unbound."

  "You said that. Can't you tell me more?"

  "There is no more."

  "Is the Unbound something beyond the world of the dead? Is there some other afterlife?"

  "There is nothing beyond or before. There only is."

  "Okay," I said, changing gears, "I want to find Olivia. There's got to be a reason you're talking to me. How do I find her?"

  The blinking continued, rhythmic and unhurried, but no answer was forthcoming. His face—her face—began to change. It started with her lips, that strange smirk softening, then the cheeks, the muscles relaxing, not as hard, not as severe, then the eyes, the rate of blinking speeding up even as the intensity of the gaze faded, turned friendlier, the self-doubt and anxiousness falling back into place.

  "Please," I said. "Please, anything else you can tell me. Any little clue. She needs us."

  Nothing.

  "Please—"

  "Find the gold," the man said, and even as he said the words, the last part of it, the little bit of the world gold was not in the man's voice, but Mary's. She took a big gulping breath, hands fluttering to her chest. "Oh my!" she exclaimed, again in a voice that was totally her own. "Oh my, I must have dozed off for a moment. Did I … did I say anything interesting?"

  I told her what had happened. She didn't remember any of it. It was tough to handle the buttons on the phone, my head was so woozy, but I played the poem back to her.

  "Oh my," she said.

  "Oh my is right. Mean anything to you?"

  "Gosh, Myron, no."

  * * *

  I quizzed her for a good hour, letting the booze wear off a little and prodding her to see if there was a connection she was missing. The ghost? The girl? The gold? Did any of it mean anything? What kind of gold did she think might help? Mary had no answers. Since I didn't sense any deception on her part, I took her home. We drove slowly, creeping through a veil of white. It still took great concentration to stay on the road, but the conditions, and the late hour, had fortunately kept just about everyone else at home.

  With luck on my side for once, I reached the yello
w house near the Marquam Bridge safely. The porch light glowed a soft, gauzy yellow in the falling snow, but all the lights inside the house were dark. Dorothy had obviously conquered her fear of rats and methane gas enough to get some sleep. Before Mary could float outside, I got out and opened the door for her.

  "Oh," she said, blinking up at me with moisture in her eyes, "oh, Myron, that's so nice of you."

  "It's the least I can do," I said.

  She took her time getting out, as if savoring the moment. Snowflakes melted on my nose. The handle, coated with a thin layer of ice, numbed my fingers. Down the street, a stray dog bounded across the road, kicking up white powder, and disappeared behind a dumpster. At least I knew the dog was real. That was always comforting, in a way, even if it was a bit sad: there were no animal ghosts, as far as I knew. As far as anyone knew.

  Standing there next to me, Mary started to reach for my hand, then must have remembered herself, because she let her arm fall.

  "I hope I've helped," she said.

  "You certainly gave me something to chew on."

  "Good. You know, um, you should talk to someone at the Department of Souls. They might have some ideas."

  "Hmm."

  "Not a big fan of the Department?"

  "That's putting it mildly."

  We stood there in silence, both of us shivering. Did she feel the cold? Based on the way she hugged her body, she obviously thought she did. She looked at me as if waiting for something else, some other form of closure, but I didn't know what to tell her.

  The dog appeared again. This time it stood in the cone of light under the streetlamp, the shadows of the snowflakes falling all around it, black pinpricks against the yellow backdrop. The dog stared right at me. I could see it only in silhouette, but based on its general size, build, and slope of its ears, it was probably some kind of Labrador. Then, while I watched, another lab just like it appeared, also staring at me. A second later, there was a third.